Power Shift: Despite the White House's much-lauded pivot to the Pacific, the Navy's Pacific commander warns that an increasingly hostile and assertive China threatens U.S. air and sea superiority in the region.

If jaws didn't drop, they should have last week when Adm. Samuel J. Locklear III, chief of U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), said: "Our historic dominance that most of us in this room have enjoyed is diminishing, no question."

U.S. naval and air superiority, particularly in the Pacific, has been taken for granted. But as Obama administration budget cuts and the effects of sequestration take their toll, our position is being severely challenged by a Chinese military benefiting from years of double-digit spending increases and a commitment from Beijing to push the U.S. out of the area.

Locklear noted the regional power shift at the annual Surface Navy Association conference in Virginia.

"We need to think about all scenarios, not just the ones we've been dealing with over the last several years, where we've enjoyed basic air superiority and basic sea superiority," he said. "There are places in the world where in this century we won't have them."

The irony is that this warning of the U.S. losing its Pacific dominance comes after the administration announced its plans for a Pacific pivot that de-emphasizes commitments in Europe and elsewhere.

President Obama pledged on Jan. 5, 2012, that his strategy would put more military muscle in Asia. The goal is to have about 60% of Navy ships dedicated to the Pacific by 2020. Of 11 active aircraft carriers, six would be committed to the region.

But these are not the heady days of President Reagan's 600-ship navy that helped buttress his strategy of "we win, they lose." Neither that Navy nor that strategy is in play anymore as the U.S. fleet dwindles from attrition while China rapidly expands its navy and develops weapons to counter ours.

One of these weapons is the Dong Feng-21D missile, intended to give China "the capability to attack large ships, particularly aircraft carriers, in the western Pacific," the Pentagon's 2012 China report said. The paper cites estimates that the missile's range exceeds 930 miles (1,500 kilometers).

Coincidentally, China's defense ministry last Wednesday announced the test of a hypersonic glide vehicle, dubbed the WU-14, designed to evade U.S. missile and other defense systems, such as the Aegis sea-based missile shield guarding our Pacific fleet and carrier battle groups.

See Also

Politics: The White House has denounced an anti-abortion group's videos of Planned Parenthood's activities as "fraudulent" and circled its wagons to defend the indefensible. What kind of White House is this?For an institution that might argue that it doesn't have a dog in this fight, the White ...

Iran Deal: After initially refusing, the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency will brief senators Wednesday. Are its nuclear monitoring practices kept secret because they're inadequate?Yukiya Amano, the director general of the IAEA, until Friday was refusing to brief senators on ...

Corruption: The third installment of released emails fell hard Friday on the Hillary Clinton campaign. If her candidacy lasts until the end of the summer, there's much more wrong with this country than we thought.Friday had to be an extraordinarily trying day for the Democratic front-runner. On the ...

Regulation: As businesses struggle to stay open and lay off workers, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing one of the biggest hiring binges in America outside of Google. Good news? Hardly.Barack Obama's EPA has announced it will try to hire 800 new regulators over the next several ...

Taxes Vs. Prosperity: The Real Wedge Issue Ronald Reagan died 11 years ago, and his presidency ended a quarter century ago. But my, how his tax-cutting ideas live on. The living legacy of Reaganomics, or supply-side economics, is that tax rates keep falling all over the world. Imitation really is ...

About Investor's Business Daily

Investor’s Business Daily provides exclusive stock lists, investing data, stock market research, education and the latest financial and business news to help investors make more money in the stock market. All of IBD’s products and features are based on the CAN SLIM® Investing System developed by IBD’s Founder William J. O’Neil, who identified the seven common characteristics that winning stocks display before making huge price gains. Each letter of CAN SLIM represents one of those traits.

Select market data is provided by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services. Price and Volume data is delayed 20 minutes unless otherwise noted, is believed accurate but is not warranted or guaranteed by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services and is subject to Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services terms. All times are Eastern United States. *Reflects real-time index prices.